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Work package 2.4----
System Development & ImplementationIntegration and Delivery
SACODEYL Corpus-Based Language Learning – Guidelines for Teachers and learners
SACODEYL Corpus-Based Language Learning – Guidelines for Teachers and Learners –*
What is SACODEYL .................................................................................................................................................. 3
The SACODEYL interviews ....................................................................................................................................... 5
Search and display .................................................................................................................................................. 12
Links to tools and resources .................................................................................................................................... 16
* Based on Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn (2009). Real language and relevant learning activities. Insights from the Sacodeyl project. In: Anton Kirchhofer and Jutta Schwarzkopf (eds.) (2009). The Workings of the Anglosphere. Contributions to the Study of British and US-American Cultures. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
SACODEYL focuses on the compilation and pedagogical exploitation of spoken interviews with British,
French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Rumanian and Spanish adolescents between 13 and 18 years of
age.
The interview transcripts are stored in online corpora and pedagogically annotated and enriched
for language learning and teaching purposes. Special emphasis is given to the design and
development of pedagogically motivated corpus tools for corpus transcription, annotation, enrichment
and search.
To further enhance and explore the corpora’s pedagogical quality, corpus-based learning activities
are pedagogically embedded in an e-learning environment facilitated through Moodle. Appropriate
pedagogic instructions and model courses enable teachers to set up and support corpus-based
blended language learning activities combining pedagogically selected interview sections and
enrichment resources with communicative interaction among learners and teachers.
The Sacodeyl tools and materials are used by teachers to facilitate pedagogic scenarios guided by
the principles of autonomous learning, collaboration and authentication; they are intended for
integration into regular classes as part of a more comprehensive and diversified pedagogic approach.
These guidelines are therefore in the first place targeted at teachers. They will, however, be also
relevant for language learners who are themselves involved in using the Sacodeyl corpus tools for
creating their own customised corpora as part of e.g. collaborative learning projects.
Pedagogic context
Modern approaches to foreign language learning and teaching are shaped by the communicative
paradigm shift, which has been unfolding and gaining ground in the English language teaching
community since the early 1970s. Three insights have been at the centre of pedagogical change:
(a) Learners have been recognised as the real players and decision-makers as to what should go
on in class, which has led to a shift from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness and an emphasis
on learner autonomy.1
(b) It has become clear that a more communicative approach also requires more authenticity, in
particular in reference to the authentication of learning materials and learning activities in meaningful
and relevant discourse events.2
1 cf. Phil Benson (2001). Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning. London: Longman.2 cf. H.G. Widdowson (2003). Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 93-109.
(c) Communicative language learning has been identified as an interactive and collaborative
undertaking.3
These insights have become constitutive for more advanced versions of communicative language
teaching (CLT) like task-based or project-based language learning4; later on they were subsumed
under the umbrella of constructivism and constructionist approaches to language learning5. As a
consequence, the objective and challenge of modern language teaching has been seen to lie in
facilitating learner autonomy, authentication and collaborative interaction.
Successful facilitation of authenticated language learning greatly depends on the availability of
suitable learning materials. In this context, the storage, processing and dissemination potential of web-
based digital language corpora can be of great help. Language corpora are, in the first place, large
collections of texts compiled according to certain selection criteria and often described and annotated
with regard to purpose-driven linguistic categories (“tags”). Lexical and category-based search
procedures enable users to quickly locate and extract certain words, word combinations and word
contexts (“concordances”) as well as parts of speech or structural units, depending on the kind of
annotation.
Up until fairly recently, language corpora were mainly designed and compiled as large
representative corpora aiming at the linguistic description and analysis of certain language varieties
based on real data. They have enjoyed practical relevance since the publication of the Collins
COBUILD English Language Dictionary (1987). Throughout the 1990s, corpus-based lexicography
flourished and was complemented by corpus-based grammar writing ranging from the Collins
COBUILD English Grammar (1990) to the Longman Grammar of Spoken and written English (1999).
With the dramatically increasing storage and processing capacities of personal computers and web
servers, corpora and corpus techniques have finally become available to ordinary end-users
themselves, including in particular language teachers and learners.6
In the following sections, the SACODEYL approach to using corpora for foreign language learning
purposes will be described and illustrated. Our approach has a certain “Do it yourself” (DIY) quality:
based on results from the European research and development project SACODEYL, we intend to
demonstrate how language teachers can be enabled to create and pedagogically exploit their own
3 cf. David Nunan (ed.) (1992). Collaborative Language Learning and Teaching, Cambridge University Press.4 cf. N.S. Prabhu (1987). Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.5 cf. Dieter Wolff (1994). “Der Konstruktivismus: Ein neues Paradigma für die Fremdsprachendidaktik?“. Die
Neueren Sprachen 93, 407-429; Bernd Rüschoff (1999). “Construction of Knowledge as the Basis of Foreign Language Learning“. In: Bettina Mißler and Uwe Multhaup (eds.). The Construction of Knowledge, Learner Autonomy and Related Issues. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 79-88.
6 cf. Sabine Braun, Kurt Kohn and Joybrato Mukherjee (eds.) (2006). Corpus Technology and Language Pedagogy. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.
small DIY corpora,7 focussing on genres and topics of immediate relevance to their specific target
group.
Pedagogic corpora
What makes a corpus a pedagogic one? This question points beyond the mere extraction and
pedagogic application of concordances, word lists and frequency counts.
Corpora provide access to real language and thus enable teachers and learning content
developers to base their pedagogical decisions on empirical facts. However, corpora are also limited in
a crucial way: they contain language data which are real but at the same time stripped bare of any
contextual information. In Henry Widdowson’s understanding, corpora contain texts in the sense of
linguistic surface manifestations of discourse.8 For successful language learning, it is necessary to
involve the learner in such a way that these corpus texts are brought back to some kind of discourse
life again.
A corpus is thus not in itself pedagogic; rather, it assumes its pedagogic quality in meaningful and
relevant pedagogic discourse. Particularly suitable for this purpose are small corpora which are
pedagogically annotated and enriched to meet the thematic and genre-specific language learning
needs of a certain target group. 9
SACODEYL takes up this approach. Pedagogical corpus adaptation includes a pedagogically
motivated annotation as well as integration of pedagogically relevant enrichment resources. The
overall objective is to help teachers and learners proceed from decontextualised textual data to
context-embedded discourse interaction and thus to facilitate and promote authenticated language
learning.
The SACODEYL interviews
Each of the small SACODEYL corpora – English, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Rumanian and
Spanish – contains 20 to 25 video-recorded interviews of about 10 minutes each. Most of the
interviews were conducted with individual pupils, some with pairs of pupils.
In order to ensure thematic comparability, a common set of questions was used, covering a wide
range of topics including personal information, home and family, present and past living routines,
7 cf. Chris Tribble (1997). “Improvising Corpora for ELT: Quick-and-Dirty Ways of Developing Corpora for Language Teaching”. In: Barbara J. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Patrick J. Melia (eds.). PALC-97: Practical Applications in Language Corpora. Lodz: Lodz University Press, 106-117; Guy Aston, “The Learner as Corpus Designer”. In: Bernd Kettemann and Georg Marko (eds.). Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 9-25.
8 cf. H.G. Widdowson (2003). Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 75-91.
9 cf. Sabine Braun (2005). “From Pedagogically Relevant Corpora to Authentic Language Learning Contents”. ReCALL 17/1, 47-64.
hobbies and interests, holidays, school and education, job experiences, plans for the future as well as
open discussion topics. In addition, the interview questions were designed to elicit responses that were
likely to favour certain proficiency levels as defined by the Common European Framework (CEF levels)
as well as pedagogically relevant language properties.
The following extracts serve to illustrate some of the language learning potential contained in the
interviews.
Extract 1 is taken from the English corpus. It concerns giving personal information on CEF level
A1/A2 (“I can describe myself, my family and other people”). Pedagogically relevant linguistic
properties include the simple present of “be” and “have” and of the general verb “go”, the comparative
construction “younger than me”; colloquial usage (“younger than me”, “me and my brother”) as well as
useful phrases (“I go to Reading School”, “[we] get on fine”).
Interview extract 1:
Interviewer: Ok, can you tell me something about yourself?
David: Ah I’m fifteen I go to Reading School and I have a brother and a sister.
Interviewer: And are the brother and sister are they older or younger?
David: Ah they’re both younger than me. My brother is about a year younger than me and my sister is about three years younger than me.
Interviewer: Do you get on well with them?
David: Yeah overall. I mean I have problems with my sister sometimes but me and my brother get on fine.
Extract 2 is also taken from the English corpus and focuses on past holidays; the CEF level is A2 (“I
can describe past activities and personal experiences). The pedagogically relevant linguistic properties
range from simple past (“went”) and present perfect (“I’ve had”, “I have done”) to prepositions (“went
on a rugby tour”), phrasal verbs (“go away”) and idiomatic phrases (“without a shadow of a doubt”).
Interview extract 2:
Interviewer: So would you say your skiing holidays are your best holidays?
Ben: […] and, you know, I’ve had I’ve had family holidays and then I’ve had holidays with my dad and then I also went away in 2006. I went on a rugby tour with twenty six people from my school. We went to South America. We went to Brazil, Argentina and Chile. And that was without a shadow of a doubt the best thing I’ve ever done.
Extract 3 is taken from the German corpus. It concerns the discussion topic “all-day school”; the CEF
level is B2 (“I can explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of
various options”). Pedagogically relevant linguistic properties include subjunctive (“hätte”, “wäre,
“sollte”), hypotactic constructions with conjunctions (“obwohl”, “weil”, “deswegen”) and particles
(“eigentlich”, “fast”, “doch”, “gerade”).
Interview extract 3:
Interviewer: Ihr habt ja nun wirklich sehr viel Nachmittagsunterricht. Was würdet ihr dann von der Einführung der Ganztagsschule bei uns halten?
Lukas: Also obwohl ich eigentlich fast jeden Nachmittag in der Schule bin, bin ich der Meinung, dass es gerade für die älteren Schüler nicht besonders viele Vorteile hätte, weil wir auch die Möglichkeit haben, in die Stadt essen zu gehen oder uns mit Freunden zu treffen und man doch durch die Ganztagsschule 'n bisschen mehr gezwungen wäre, in der Schule zu bleiben und dort zu essen. Deswegen bin ich der Meinung, dass es gerade für die älteren Klassen jedem selbst überlassen bleiben sollte, was er in seiner Mittagspause macht.
The interview format thus proves highly suitable for eliciting spoken language material that combines
up-to-date topics with pedagogically relevant linguistic means of expression from grammatical
structures to words and phrases, elements of spoken discourse and special pronunciation features.
However, pedagogically appropriate corpus tools are needed for making this material accessible for
pedagogical exploitation.
Customised annotation
A SACODEYL corpus contains orthographical interview transcripts in XML format, which are structured
in short thematic sections and annotated with regard to pedagogically relevant characteristics
regarding e.g. topic, grammar, lexis, discourse markers and CEF level.
While a typical corpus annotation is based on words and phrases, annotation in SACODEYL
applies to the thematic sections specified during transcription. An interview transcript is loaded into the
SACODEYL Annotator, and each interview section is then annotated by selecting categories from a list
of available annotation categories and assigning them in a drag-and-drop fashion to the respective
section. The specific parts in a section to which a category applies (i.e. a word form or grammatical
construction) are marked by a colour coding.
Fig. 1: The SACODEYL Annotator
In this way, transcripts can be annotated in an efficient manner without any specialised computer
knowledge or skills. And what is more, the SACODEYL Annotator also enables teachers to define their
own customised annotation categories (see Fig. 2).
Fig. 2: The SACODEYL Annotator – Customisation of annotation categories
This allows them to annotate the interview transcripts with regard to those characteristics they deem
pedagogically most relevant for a particular target group or learning purpose.
Enrichment resources
The SACODEYL corpus data represent pedagogically annotated but otherwise decontextualised
interview transcripts. Further pedagogic mediation materials and procedures are thus required to help
teachers and learners authenticate these data in meaningful and relevant pedagogic discourse
activities. For this purpose, access to various web-based enrichment resources is provided, including
the interview sound and video files, cultural information, ready-made web-based language learning
tasks and instructions for explorative and communicative learning activities.
Enrichment resources are stored in the Virtual Resource Pool (VRP) in the form of web links
consisting of a name, type specification, brief description and web address. In the process of
annotating a corpus, relevant resources were selected from the VRP and pasted into Resource Sheets
(RS); these were then attached to the respective interview section for enrichment. When searching a
corpus, users can access available resources via these resource sheets.
Fig. 3: Virtual resource sheet with resources for an interview section
The language learning modules forming part of the SACODEYL enrichment resources are created
with Telos Language Partner10, a template-based authoring tool that supports a wide range of
language learning specific activities. Depending on their inherent language learning potential, interview
sections are used in language-focused Telos tasks, which may combine lexico-grammatical and
pragmatic knowledge development with listening, reading and writing exercises. The basic materials in
these tasks include excerpts from interview transcripts as well as sound or video files or any other
enrichment resources that meet the respective learning objectives.
10 cf. Kurt Kohn, “Telos Language Partner: Do-it-Yourself Authoring for Content-Based Language Learning”. In: Ana M. Gimeno (ed.). Computer Assisted Language Learning: Authoring Tools for Web-Based CALL. Valencia, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 157-174; also see the Telos learning packages on http://www.sprachlernmedien.de (31 May 2008) [→ Open Learning Space].
Fig. 4: Exercises from a Telos learning module
The Telos tasks are available for corpus users as ready-made learning units; but they also serve as
models for teachers who want to produce their own customised exercises.
To get a free licence of the Telos Language Partner software, go to “Authoring Software” at
www.sprachlernmedien.de
The explorative and communicative exercises are specified in PDF sheets. They put special
emphasis on integrating interview-related learning activities in a classroom and/or Moodle-based e-
learning environment. A typical exercise might combine a corpus search with a forum discussion, a
wiki collaboration or a group interaction in class.
Specific interview topics might be taken as a starting point for further exploration and discussion
activities that invite pupils to expand their cultural and linguistic knowledge individually and in
cooperation with others and to practise their reading and speaking skills as they go along. In
connection with a relevant interview (section), these activities provide opportunities for authenticated
learning experiences.
The following examples are taken from the English corpus enrichment resources.
TOPIC 1: Who I am and where I liveExploratory Exercise
CEF level: A2
Task topic 1 – E10
Activity The students explore the extracts of the corpus where the interviewees talk about a
number of English cities. They look for these cities on a map and find additional information
about them.
Task • Go to the “co-occurence search” tab.
• Search for one of the following places: Aurora, Bristol, Oxford, London, Jersey,
Other search options provide opportunities for exploring a corpus with regard to lexical properties.
WORD SEARCH enables users to run concordance (KWIC) analyses with up to three key words and
varying lengths for right and left context. CO-OCCURRENCE is used to search for passages that
contain a set of specified words, e.g. words that are of particular thematic and/or pedagogic interest.
The search scope can be defined as a sequence of x sentences, an interview section or an entire
interview. These lexical searches can be further restricted by using annotation categories (e.g. CEF
level, topic, grammatical structure) as filters. It is always possible to switch from lexical search results
to interview transcripts and online video views.
When searching a corpus, users can also display the resource sheets that have been linked up
with interview sections in the annotation process. This provides them with a contextualized path to the
enrichment resources – e.g. video and sound files, Telos tasks, and PDF sheets with explorative and
communicative exercises – specifically made available for a respective section. For a more direct and
systematic look-up of enrichment resources, users can open the “resources” tab in the menu bar of the
search interface.
Open access to enrichment resources and their web addresses is of special importance for
teachers who want to develop their own corpus-based multimedia learning materials with Telos
Language Partner and who aim at making learning with SACODEYL interviews – in Moodle or in class
– pedagogically more relevant and more attractive.
Link to SACODEYL Search Tool:
http://purl.org/sacodeyl/searchtool
Pedagogic integration
In SACODEYL, the actual pedagogic exploitation of the annotated and enriched interview corpora is
further enhanced by a Moodle-based e-learning environment. Its main function is to help teachers
provide and monitor authenticated learning opportunities that combine language-focused Telos tasks
with collaborative learning and communicative interaction.
It is important to note that learning is conceptualized and organized as a pedagogic blend of online and
offline, classroom and homework activities. The e-learning environment assumes a double function in
this connection: it facilitates online learning and at the same time is used to orchestrate the entire
pedagogic event.
To create customized blended learning units for their target groups, teachers can choose activities
from the various SACODEYL corpus resources and combine them as pedagogically required:
First, the available Telos learning modules support fairly closed ready-made learning activities
based on selected interview sections. They cover the whole range of topics addressed in a corpus and
focus on linguistic forms, functions and skills. The Telos exercises are intended to offer pedagogically
structured learning opportunities that help students to work with the interviews in particular with regard
to the challenge of understanding textual manifestations of spoken discourse and practicing relevant
linguistic means of expression.
Second, the suggestions for explorative and communicative activities adopt a more open
approach. Communicative tasks often start with listening to interview sections covering a specific topic,
and are followed up by group or partner interaction in class or collaborative e-learning activities using
the forum or wiki functions in Moodle. Explorative tasks include web searches as well as activities
where students are asked to use the SACODEYL search tool to find out what different speakers say
about a certain topic or which linguistic means of expression they are using. The tasks have a rather
flexible design and can easily be adapted by teachers to the specific needs of their students.
The following example illustrates how teachers can combine the available materials and use them
in their language courses. The example is based on the French corpus and addresses learning
objectives characteristic of CEF level A2.
Fig. 7: Pedagogic integration in Moodle
The unit starts off with a Telos learning module based on interview sections in which two 13-year-olds,
a boy and a girl, from Guadeloupe introduce themselves and talk about things they like. The learning
module offers a structured self-study unit introducing the topic and offering listening practice and
comprehension exercises. In addition, learners are familiarised with the basic means of expression
enabling them to introduce and talk about themselves according to A2 level requirements. The module
also includes grammatical exercises for practicing the conjugation of verbs in the present tense.
All the activities that follow build on the Telos learning module offering various opportunities for
more or less authentic exploration and communication activities. Since the two interviewees
introducing themselves in the Telos module are both from Guadeloupe, learners are given a simple
explorative task requiring them to search a website for basic information on Guadeloupe; an
appropriate web link is provided along with some guiding questions. In another explorative task, the
learners are asked to use the SACODEYL corpus search to find out how different speakers introduce
themselves and to analyse the linguistic means of expression that are used in relevant interview
sections.
Performing the explorative tasks in pairs of two or in small groups adds a collaborative and
communicative dimension. Learners could, for instance, be asked to note down information on the
speakers they focus on, compare and discuss thematic and linguistic peculiarities in a group forum and
give an oral presentation later in class. By inviting learners to introduce themselves in a multimedia
blog, an even deeper personal involvement and authentication would be achieved. These activities
would find their natural continuation in e-twinning projects between schools from different countries.11
A SACODEYL Moodle Demo Course is available at
www.sprachlernmedien.de
Pedagogical evaluation in schools is needed to shed light on the potential and feasibility of the
SACODEYL approach. This concerns in particular the nature of the learning and teaching activities
involved, teacher and learner satisfaction as well as learning outcomes. Due attention should also be
given to the media competences required by teachers and pupils and to the need for continuous
training. Additional attention should be given to the overall definition and organisation of the teachers’
workload. While e-learning promises to open up new spaces for autonomous collaboration and
authentic interaction, these promises will only come true if teachers are enabled to provide pedagogic
guidance and support outside and beyond the traditional classroom environment.
Links to tools and resources
SACODEYL Annotator http://www.um.es/sacodeylSACODEYL Search Tool: http://purl.org/sacodeyl/searchtoolTelos Language Partner software www.sprachlernmedien.deTelos learning modules and the explorative and
communicative exercises can be accessed via the
SACODEYL Search Tool. To access the resources,
select a corpus and then click on the Resources menu.